


the sea is a good place to think of the future

by dorkstrider



Series: the note desolation plays [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M, Multi, Post-Sburb, Recreational Drug Use, los camp basically sponsors my writing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-04
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2018-08-19 12:06:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8206793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dorkstrider/pseuds/dorkstrider
Summary: the betas are a mess, but to be fair, so are their kids.





	1. Dave

**Author's Note:**

> hey! hi. in the true spirit of this ao3 account, i'm uploading something about three months after i wrote it, which is still an improvement from my last piece which i posted four YEARS later, so......... that's progress?
> 
> this is inspired by a post-sburb dirkjake au that i wrote with my partner, in which the betas are a huge mess and so are their kids. this work is an anthology of significant moments throughout dirk's life and how they served to form the relationships that are most important to him.
> 
> this chapter, specifically, is set around the time that dirk is eight and he and dave have been crashing with the lalondes for a year and a half or so.
> 
> i'll be posting chapters day by day - i have five currently finished, but the eight day deadline is basically me kicking my own ass into finally finishing this
> 
> warnings include substance abuse, questionable suicide ideation, language (as though anyone needs to warn for that when they're writing for fucking homestuck), discussion of mental illness and generally unhealthy family relationships
> 
> specific chapters will get more specific warnings but there's really nothing too alarming to warn for aside from drug use, which is more discussed than it is used throughout these chapters
> 
> thanks go to my partner who has re-read each paragraph of this about eight times and somehow never lost patience when i insisted that he read it for the NINTH time because i changed one word
> 
> please enjoy and thank you for reading <3

It's been a year and a half since Rose brought you and Dave into her sprawling upstate New York home without any word of time limits or compensation, but today is the day that all that is supposed to change.

Today is an important day and you knew, implicitly, that you would be responsible for making it happen.

Roxy's alarm clock is loud, upsettingly so, and she squirms and protests and smacks you on the arm when you don't turn it off quickly enough. The two of you have been sharing a bedroom for almost your entire stay; Rose had given you your own room in the beginning, a much bigger and nicer one than you were used to, but you struggled to sleep. The scent that drifted in the windows was unfamiliar, the sheets were a different texture than you were used to and all in all, it had felt cold and unfamiliar and you couldn't settle down, yet alone feel comfortable enough to rest when doing so was already a difficult task.

Roxy's room was the polar opposite, a gaudy, pastel pink affair with fluffy blankets and stuffed animals and fairy lights, because she was afraid of the dark and was surprisingly unashamed about it. It smelt soft, that was really the only word for it, and you thought that that made sense because Roxy was soft and gentle and pretty.

On your second night staying with the Lalondes, she offered you one of her toy horses whom you promptly christened Buttercup. Buttercup was pink and stuffed and ridiculously lovely to touch, and you knew she was extended as a peace offering; a sign that you were welcome in Roxy's house and her room and her life. You slept in her room that night and then every night afterwards, and Roxy knew that you didn't want to make a big deal out of it, but it was accepted from that point onwards that the two of you would stick together.

There are times when you do need your own space, your own self-contained area where you can close your eyes and imagine that the endless stream of thoughts that fill your mind would escape and gradually fill up the room itself, so that you could close the door to trap them in there and come back to them when you’re ready.

It’s your own way of clearing your mind, managing your fast moving brain, but this is a big house and there are a lot of rooms available for such a purpose. Roxy had helped you make a sign with poster paper and glitter pens, reading ‘DIRK’S THOUGHT ROOM - NO ENTRY’ and although it sometimes makes you feel silly, it does help you to feel less overstimulated and overwhelmed.

That's how you start most mornings, engaging in that ritual so your mind is at full capacity to tackle the challenges of the day ahead of you. This morning, though, there's no time. You have work to do, and as ever, the work in question is being Dave's handler. It's a big job for an eight year old, but you also know that you're very good at it and the thought doesn't intimidate you in the least.

You pad through the house that isn't quite yours, the floorboards cold under your feet. It's autumn, and autumn in New York kicks off early, unlike your home in Dallas where no matter what time of year it might be, the climate stubbornly remains hot and humid with little variation.

Dave's room is down the hall from Rose's, presumably for his own safety, so it's not hard to find him even in the sprawling mansion you've learned to call home. You and Roxy have gone exploring in this place and, thus far, found a grand total of nine bedrooms and four bathrooms. It's completely outside of your experience and you're still nursing a theory that this house exists in a whole other dimension.

You knock briefly, though doing so is mainly a formality that you save for John's occasional visits, and when you hear no protests from behind the door you push it open slowly, never too certain what you'll find.

Thankfully, Dave looks like he's only asleep and not dead or passed the fuck out beyond any hope of convincing him to rise again. Sending him into a meeting with producer when he's fresh off an overdose sounds like a pretty terrible idea, but it's rare that he can afford what Rose refers to as his 'preferred brand of poison' these days. She's the only reason that you really know what it is that he's dealing with, having judged you mature enough to handle the truth, and she had told you if you didn't find out from her, you'd find out from a less friendly face.

You'd been scared, you'd asked what you could do to help and Rose had smiled something awful, small and heartbroken, and it had thrown you off to see this towering, elegant woman look so helpless. She'd told you that having you around helped Dave as much as was possible at this point, and all you could do was to hold on hope that it'd be enough.

That responsibility to help Dave is something you've taken very seriously. You're his handler, as you said, and this morning that means getting him out of bed and convincing him it's worth the time and effort to leave the house and go to his meeting is one of the things that you have to handle.

You scoot around the room, opening up the curtains so that the sun hits him full blast, which is the first thing to get a reaction out of him. Dave groans and attempts to roll onto his belly but can't seem to summon up the energy to do so, so instead he gives up and settles on lying there with one arm thrown over his eyes. He used to tell you that the sun would blind him to stop you from using this method of waking him, because it was so effective, but then you tested that theory for yourself and though it hurt your light-sensitive eyes and gave you kind of a headache, it did not in fact blind you. Mythbusted.

The room is in as much of a state of disarray as ever; Dave likes to say that he keeps it in organized chaos and refuses to let you clean it up for him no matter how much you beg, but God if it isn't frustrating when you can never, ever find the things you need in here. In this instance, what you need is a waterbottle, which you find on the floor at the side of the bed and you pounce upon it, pointing it at him menacingly once you've retrieved it.

"Up and at 'em, bro," you say, giving the water bottle a weak squeeze so he accepts the reality of the threat. A jet of cool water lands on his cheek and splashes over the side of his face and he splutters, actually successful in his attempted roll away from you this time. Patiently, you reach out to take hold of his forearm and tug at it, knowing you probably couldn't pull him out of bed but he's not all that strong. There's always a chance, and you're fond of overestimating yourself.

Dave groans, opening one red eye very slowly to look at you, bleary and unfocused, before it slides closed again. “Rose. I need Rose.”

Irritation flares in your chest and you tug a little more firmly at his arm, thinking that you probably could drag him out of bed if it came to that. “Well that sucks for you, because she has an interview with Colbert today. All you got’s me and all I got’s you, so let’s figure it out.”

“Bullshit, Rose thinks Colbert is an ass.” He tries to swat you away but you’re too quick for him, he’s groggy and slow moving and this is really not looking very good. If there’s one thing you can say for yourself, though, it’s that when you want something done, you can usually find a way to get it done.

“Rose thinks you’re a pompous ass, but she still bothers with you.” Dave looks like he wants to admonish you, but he can't really be bothered, because no matter what he says, you’ll have an answer for him. He seems to like and hate your smart mouth in equal measure, depending on the conditions in which it’s used.

You take advantage of his silence to launch a fresh wave of irritation in the name of getting him up and out of bed. "I mean, if we have the time, I could take you through the subtle differences between different horse breeds, the function and chemical makeup of lunar dust, a one-man production of Rent. Take your pick."

"All of that involves you makin' noise at me and I'm gonna need you to stop that real quick," he says in response, but at least he's pulling himself up into a sitting position. This, historically speaking, is a sign that you've somehow wrangled yourself a victory and you can't help but feel smug about it. You barely even had to try this time, so his mood can't have hit too much of a low.

"I'll stop makin' noise as soon as you get yourself in the shower," you shoot back, crossing your arms over your chest and raising your eyebrows at him in the most challenging manner that you're capable of.

The two of you lock eyes for a moment, as though he's questioning whether you'd actually annoy him all the way out of bed and into the shower despite the fact he knows you and that's the least of your frustrating abilities. You take a deep breath. "Palominos, contrary to popular belief, are actually a variation of coat colouring in horses and not a breed in and of themselves. Genetically, they're a mutation, occurring when a horse has the cream gene on top of a base chestnut coat colour but that mutation can occur without breed limitations. There are several different kinds of-"

"Aaaaugh," Dave says, which you guess counts as a response, but it doesn't really matter because he's hauled himself out of bed and you've achieved your objective. You're quick, stepping into the bathroom to make sure that he doesn't have anything stashed in there - he does, but only coke, which would probably have the opposite effect of putting him back to sleep so you don't bother to confiscate it for the time being. "What are you, my parole officer," he mumbles as he tosses his shirt aside, as though that hasn't been dangerously close to reality for you on multiple occasions.

You shrug, doing your best not to eye up the insides of his arms as you slip out of the en suite bathroom and close the door behind you. Dave knows better than to think you'll leave him to his own devices from hereon out, and though you do hear the loud, unpleasant sound of him snorting cocaine off the sink, yet again you can only assume that'll be conducive to what you're trying to achieve here. Maybe you should question the wisdom of being intoxicated when he's trying to pitch his work to someone who, by some miracle or perhaps by the grace of some particular strand of insanity that matches up with your brothers', apparently considers Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff something that the world needs to see and/or will want to see.

It doesn't make sense but you've taken on sole responsibility for kicking Dave's insecure butt into action. You've read over the script a few times, against the advice of the few adults in your life, and though you barely understood several of the concepts that were addressed, you have to admit that it has merit. It's genuinely funny in that Dave way, that incredibly dry, self-aware kind of way that addresses with bald faced honesty exactly how goddamn ridiculous it is. You figure, with Caulfield-esque logic, that either people will get it or they'll feel compelled to pretend that they get it in order to make themselves look smart, so it's kind of a win win situation.

Fifteen minutes pass while he's in the shower, exactly the amount of time that you had allotted him for the task, and you bang on the door. You always allow a little extra time for him to dress himself because he usually gets his pants on and decides that he can't be fucked any more. "The quarter horse was adapted to run a quarter mile as fast as possible, which is the average length of a racetrack," you shout over the sound of the running water, and then it's hissing to a stop and you hear your brother clamber out, muttering things to himself that you can't quite make out.

"Are you gonna vacate so that I can make myself decent, at least," Dave complains from the other side of the door, and you quickly collect what little gear he has left in his room (if anything will convince him to seal this deal and get some money coming in, it's that, so you stow away the knowledge for later use) before leaving and closing the door behind you. "Alright, get on with it," you call back, sounding as casual as possible when you're holding a packet of sterilized single needles in one hand and a smaller bag of ash-coloured powder in the other, along with a burnt, slightly twisted looking spoon.

This probably isn't how most people your age live their life, but the shaky, frantic nature of your life keeps you from getting bored, and that's a strong incentive for you.

It takes a lot more bullying and needling, but eventually the two of you are in a cab and on your way to this big shot's office, smack bang in the middle of the city. The four of you don't go into New York very often; being around too many people makes Dave self conscious and uncomfortable and dizzy, Rose considers it 'garish', and for your part the loud, bright assault on your senses isn't exactly something you welcome, not to mention the way that everyone brushes and bumps you as though you're not even there. Personal space kind of stops being a thing.

When you step inside the building, it's like you've entered a different world. The world, as you know it, is messy and chaotic, and it's a world that you and your brother fit into. It's a world where Dave's idea of dressing up means wearing his high tops that haven't been completely vanquished by wear and tear. This office is aggressively pristine and you feel like a member of an alien race that travelled billions of light years across the universe for the sole purpose of scuffing up this lobby. You're snickering at the thought as Dave herds you into the glass elevator, and you wonder if being silent for this long might actually cause his voice box to atrophy.

"We should turn around and go back," Dave says about seven times while you're in the elevator, and you sigh as though you've been dealing with his dramatics for thirty years instead of eight. It would look kind of funny, you being as small as you are (you're hanging out for your growth spurt) and dragging your big, lanky brother around by his heels.

"You worked hard on this, so follow it through. Either it sucks and they tell you that it sucks and you'll know for sure, or they'll tell you that it's good and you get a ton of money thrown at you. Either way, you come out of this with a resolution," you respond in the flat tone of voice that you've perfected after mimicking Dave for years, and although you're not exactly sure that that would qualify as a pep talk, it seems to break him out of the broken-record act at least. He's fidgeting, tapping his fingers against his thigh rapidly, in time to a tune that only he can hear, and no longer looks like he's searching for the first opportunity to bolt out of there and never look back. You can only take that as progress.

The elevator dings to a stop on the top level and you go up to the window with your mouth slightly agape, pressing your palms to it and revelling in the cool, smooth feeling of glass against your skin. Walls of glass go on the pleasant feeling list. The city below you looks so huge and bright and alive with teeny, tiny people, all of whom look like they're in a rush. Surely they can't _all_ be as important as they think they are, you wonder to yourself. It reminds you of the view off the balcony in your apartment in Texas, but there were quiet times when the city and its occupants slept peacefully. This is different, somehow; this city couldn't sleep even if it wanted to, there's far too much going on and far too much to be done, and you can relate to it in that way.

This isn't something you're announcing to the public but you're pretty excited to be able to look down at the city from so high up. Present, and yet detached. Looking, watching, but not engaging with the city itself. You like that.

Dave is laughing and offering the receptionist/assistant/whatever some vaguely insulting explanation for your behaviour - 'he doesn't get out much', you'd be willing to bet - but you know that having your general weirdness break the ice for him would have helped.

Once he's done with the formalities and officially has no other option but to hang around in the waiting room anticipating his own personal judgment day, Dave approaches the window and reaches his hand down to you in a rare show of vulnerability. He doesn't often ask you for physical contact and obviously you don't like to extend it to him, but on the rare occasions that it does happen, you figure it must be important enough for you to indulge him.

Your small hand fits into his easily and, as always, you flinch at the slightly unpleasant feeling of skin on skin, at the grooves and whirls patterned into your skin meeting his and refusing to match. It's rough and staticky in the strangest way and you long to let go, but you don't. You can manage this for now.

You wonder what he thinks about when he looks down at the city. You wonder if he's wondering about what you might be thinking. Dave doesn't really think about things like that, though, by your understanding of him - he's more inclined to embrace moments as they come, enjoying the nice ones and largely forgetting or ignoring anything that might fit on the negative side of the spectrum. This probably counts as a nice one, or it will, if all goes well.

More accurately, it doesn't necessarily feel nice or bad, it feels like you're standing on the precipice of something. Hovering on the edge of a building, looking down at the 20 story drop and deciding to take the risk that you might land. Not fly, not discover some incredibly cool latent superpower, but land and continue on, knowing that you can.

Dave nearly jumps out of his skin when the lady at the desk calls his name and comes over to escort him away, shooting you a smile that you imagine is supposed to be warm and comforting, but the idea that you need comforting and you're not just as capable of handling this situation as any of the adults present grates on you. You're almost inclined to ask if you can go with Dave, but you know what the answer will be, and you're unwilling to do anything that might jeopardize this for him so you stay put and stay quiet.

This is very important, you know that, and the obvious importance that's been ascribed to it, based on the possibilities that could arise if all goes well, is something that makes you feel genuinely hopeful. Maybe if the people that Dave is meeting with buy what he's been writing, he'll feel better. Maybe he'll be able to do more to take care of himself. Maybe if he has something to be proud of, he'll be happy and he'll be able to help you be happy, because he knows you better than anybody - he's too sad to do anything about it right now, but you can change that.

It feels like you're sitting in the waiting room for hours, and honestly you might have been, but you figure that being here for a long time is probably a good sign. It takes all of five minutes to hear and idea and say no to it, but a meeting this long implies a discussion. It implies possibility.

You count the tiny cracks in the paint and isolate the different patterns in the carpet to pass the time, completely silent and lost in thought. When that stops being enough to occupy your mind, you pace and go back over to the window and count the people that you can see on the street. You're up to 1,026 when you hear a door open, somewhere, and the definite sound of your brother's familiar broad drawl as he emerges.

It's not the flat, dead-inside monotone voice that he uses when he's trying to hide disappointment or fear or sadness or any other emotion that he might experience. It's something else entirely, the slightly higher tone of voice that Dave employs on the rare occasions he lets himself get excited and enthusiastic about something. Your heart thumps rapidly in your chest.

When you see him he's rapidly shaking hands with some guy in a suit in a way that makes it perfectly obvious he's not used to shaking hands at all, but it doesn't seem to matter. Dave's hair is tousled and his cheeks are flushed and all of these things scream _good news_ in a way that you're not used to seeing, not at all. It's like you're exhilarated on his behalf.

"It's cool if I say that I told you so, right?" you pipe up as the two of you get back in the elevator, because Dave still hasn't said anything but it's obvious that he's vibrating out of his skin in his desperation to do so, and he looks down at you and for a moment you're not quite sure what to expect. He crouches down, squats on his knees and wraps his arms around you, warm and tight, and holds you as close as he possibly can. This is the second bout of unexpected physical contact you've received so far today, which is well beyond your limit, but yet again you convince yourself to let it go and wrap your arms back around him in kind. The fabric of his shirt is nice and it settles you down. "You can say whatever the fuck you want, kid. Jesus. Fucking… Jesus Christ," he says, his body shuddering against yours, and when he pulls back you pretend that you don't notice when he wipes tears from underneath the frames of his glasses.


	2. John

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> greetings once again and thank you for the kudos on the last chapter! you are the true mvps.
> 
> this chapter is set around the time dirk is 14, so we're jumping forward quite a bit from the time period in the last chapter and things are great! and by great i mean terrible and by terrible i mean poor, not very good, quite bad, not a fun time
> 
> thanks for reading!

The sea is the only place that has ever truly felt like home, or at least the way that home has been described to you.

You’re a creature of habit, a slave to routine, and whenever you feel the need to escape you always find your way to the same place. This beach is the place where you first felt alive, like a real person instead of a haphazard sum of your parts and never truly whole.

It makes you feel secure, safe in a way that makes little sense considering how unpredictable and wild it is at its core. It’s unfathomable, beautiful on its surface and dangerous at its core, and you suppose you see something of yourself in it.

It’s been four years since you first came here with Dave, during your first month in California, and it sends a spike of panic directly into your chest when you think about how it has changed and you have not. You rarely change; you pride yourself on your ability to learn, but not necessarily to develop. You get the feeling this place isn’t very well maintained- it’s not exactly a tourist trap, which is why Dave brought you here in the first place, you're sure- as evidenced by the way the paint has peeled on the benches overlooking the sandy banks and the way the beech tree has grown untamed and uncared for. Yet again, you see something of yourself there.

Everything is leaving a bitter taste in your mouth today. It’s one of those odd weeks when John has been staying with the two of you and Dave somehow manages to become reclusive even within the confines of his own house, rarely leaving his bedroom. Whenever John is here, you officially drop off his radar, and you suppose it’s a small mercy that the two of them can’t tolerate being together for longer than a week or so.

You get spiteful, you get bitter and twisted up inside, and you figure seeing as he’s not paying attention to you anyway, you can disappear without a trace to few protests. It’s only a forty five minute walk from the house to this beach, and you’ve made the journey so many times you think you could do it with your eyes closed. It’s shitty, pointless adolescent rebellion, designed to get a reaction out of him that only comes to fruition about 50% of the time; when he doesn’t drag his strung out ass over here to tell you to come home, he waits until you get hungry or tired and have no choice but to do so for yourself.

Dave always trusts that you’ll come back, and you kind of hate him for it.

You think you must be angry, but anger has never been as visceral an experience for you as it seems to be for everyone else. It starts with a kind of agitated unease, making your fists clench and your mind race and ends with you pacing in circles, having silent arguments with yourself that you rarely bother to verbalize. Now that you have the AR, sometimes you'll talk at it for hours on end until your logic beats out your furor and you can't remember why you were so mad in the first place.

That control, that entirely self contained storm that only you could ever hope to tame, is another quality you share with the sea. The clouds roll overhead, grey and heavy with the weight of what is to come, and all that can be done is to wait until they've worn themselves out.

The moody state of the weather, combined with the fact that there aren't many people who know this beach as it is, has left the stretch of beach abandoned save for you, your tree and your thoughts. You thank whichever benevolent god of good luck that you've managed to please, because even in California, smoking up in public will still get your ass thrown in jail. Weed is kind of something that you've taken on recently, having dug through your brother's 'supplies' and extensively researched what he had and what they did to a person, before landing on weed as being objectively harmless while still operating as a temporary space-filler for the cavernous void in your soil that makes you ache when you think about it.

It hasn’t taken you very long at all to learn that something is infinitely better than nothing and, pathetically, it makes you feel like you understand Dave a little better. It's actually definitely pathetic for you to smoke joints in your bedroom and think that you understand heroin addiction because of it, but it's not like you have a better alternative available to you. Not one that you have the guts to take on yet, anyway.

Your introduction to the world of drugs has been careful, as measured and methodical as everything else that you do.

You rolled joints before you came, because you're the kind of guy that comes prepared, but one thing you couldn't prepare for is the way that the wind keeps blowing out the flame. You try a few more times to light it up with no luck, and you're about to dismiss the entire endeavour in disgust when you hear a voice from behind you that makes you jump.

"You have to shield it with your hand, you dummy. It's super weird that you can program artificial intelligence but the breeze can kick your ass," the voice says, and you realize with a rush of anger that it's John.

John is your brother's boyfriend; a big, broad shouldered jock-y kinda guy with dark hair and a perpetual smile, marred slightly by his dorky buck teeth, although you think that Dave must somehow consider them a big plus. He's some kinda mixed ethnicity but you've never cared enough to ask about it - treating any part of John's existence as an interesting thing to be explored in detail would feel like some kind of a loss.

John makes an effort with you from time to time, but for the most part, you brush it off. The three of you will be eating pizza together or watching some dumb shit on TV and he'll mention your autoresponder and how it's pretty cool that you can do stuff like that, and you say that it sure is. If he asks you about Squarewave, who is your first fully fledged robot and kind of your pride and joy (you'd talk to anyone else about him until you're blue in the goddamn face), you opt to rattle off a bunch of technical jargon that barely means anything at all and finish it off with 'but, you know, that's the simple explanation' to be condescending.

All in all, you're not exactly friendly, but to his credit he never seems to stop trying. You're not sure that is a credit to him, actually- in theory that could mean that he's incredibly stupid.

In this case you think he might be right about blocking off the wind with your hand, loathe though you are to take his advice, and instead you turn your back to the direction that you think the wind is coming from and have far more success in lighting up your joint. You don't care that he knows - you're sure that Dave must know, because you make absolutely no effort to mask the scent that wafts underneath your door, so it's not like you're getting caught red handed or anything.

You don't even dignify his bullshit with a response, leaning back against the trunk of the three and breathing in deeply, focusing on watching the way that smoke wafts out of your parted lips rather than making eye contact with him. You're not sure what he's doing or what he must be thinking; you suppose that he's waiting for you, showing a level of patience you could never expect from Dave.

"Dave doesn't even care enough to come here and get me himself," you say once you've finished your joint and you're finally ready to speak, and there's not a trace of sadness in your tone, none of the self-pity that you would loathe to hear from yourself. It's a simple statement of fact. "It's always the same. Either you come and get me, or I make my own way back, but he…" You trail off, your gaze lingering on the sea as it gradually changes from sparkling turquoise to a moody grey, reflecting the sky above it. "He's not gonna start caring any time soon. I have to stop waiting for that."

"That's dumb, and you know that's dumb," John says, and it throws you for a loop. You're not sure how to react for a moment - you refuse to present yourself in a way that would give him the opportunity to treat you like a child or anything less than an equal. You fix him with a look that's burning, intense even through your shades, measured to an expert degree and yet clearly teetering on the edge of something. A weaker person than John would flinch or take a step back in the face of it, but he is starkly unaffected by it and it's infuriating. "Dave thinks you left because you didn't want to be there and that's it. He's not gonna force it on you, dude."

You scoff, annoyed by what a completely bullshit excuse that is and also by having a 30 year old with Urkel glasses call you 'dude'. "Why are you here doing his dirty work right now, anyway," you ask, still keeping yourself as cold and void of inflection as you can so he knows exactly how little it means to you that he's been sent to your "aid". You know, in case it somehow escaped his notice. "He can't even stand to be around you for more than a couple days at a time. You're a glorified booty call, bro, stop trying to act like you're anything more than that. Stop pretending like you know me or have any kind of influence over me. Fuckin' stop generally, this whole thing you're doing… it's pathetic."

John takes a deep breath, and you suppress a smirk because some nasty, twisted part of you is glad to know that he's even a modicum as pissed off as you are. "Dirk," he says, his voice steady, but there's definitely an undercurrent of something you can't quite identify. "You aren't gonna hear this very often in your life, but you have no idea what you're talking about. Stop being a baby. Don't you want him to be happy?"

You stiffen instantly, a hundred different retorts sitting on the tip of your razor sharp tongue. You could say that it never seemed to matter to him whether /you/ were happy; you could say that even if you wanted him to be, you're no longer deluded enough to think that Dave cares about what you think of him; you could say, cruelly, that the only kind of happiness he's chasing is a chemical kind and that's something John will never be able to provide him.

The thing about all of those responses is that they are not, in fact, answers.

_Don't you want him to be happy._

You've thought a thousand times about what you want from Dave, but not for him. You want some kind of recompense, in the form of an explanation as to why nothing you did for him was ever enough. Why, if it came down to a choice between you and his preferred brand of poison, he'd choose drugs every single time. Why you have to go through your life knowing that and letting that knowledge burn a blistering, painful hole into your brain.

Nothing you could say would be sufficient. No words you know could properly encapsulate the feeling of wanting someone to be happy but also wanting them to know how deeply unhappy they've made you, how much they've irreversibly changed you for the worse. You put out your joint, squishing it into the ground and wrinkling your nose at the acrid smell that it briefly emits. "Let's go home," you say, your voice small and hollow in comparison to the powerful crash of the waves as they break on the shore.

Somehow your lack of an answer weighs heavier on the both of you than anything you could have said.


	3. Jake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> did i say i'd have all these chapters finished and posted in a week? i mean 'over the course of a few months, maybe, if we're lucky'
> 
> in the aggressively non-linear spirit of homestuck, this chapter jumps back to the time dirk is nine, he and dave are staying in bro's old apartment in texas over summer while dave is writing his final script of the moive, and one of dave's old friends and her grandson have moved in across the hall, namely jade harley and jake english.
> 
> i kind of love this and i hope you do too

Summer is drawing to an end, and though living in the heart of Dallas doesn't afford you the opportunity to watch the foliage gradually drift through the colour spectrum, you can feel that it's gotten a couple of degrees cooler and the sun has called off its tactical assault upon the city. You still kind of feel like you're frying in your own skin, but the beginning of the change of seasons has made it possible for you to loaf around on the balcony of Jake and Jade's apartment, which is one of your favourite activities. 

Their apartment is generally kind of a major league assault to your visual senses, but you also love howdifferent it is to your own apartment. In your apartment, none of your furniture matches and the decorations are generally of the ‘gratuitously idiotic’ variety, like posters for movies that you both fucking hate and a series of incredibly close up photos of Snoop Dogg.

Jade and Jake's apartment, on the contrary, is full of evidence of the complicated kind of love that’s shared between them, the mantel full to capacity with photos of them on various expeditions - there’s a photo of Jake holding up a small, very angry looking snake in is hands with a grin from ear to ear; a photo of the both of them sitting atop a cliff, looking down at the rainforest below; a photo of the both of them with their giant, inhuman beast of a dog, who somehow never gets cooped up in their small Texas apartment.

Above all else, plants are the dominant theme of their apartment, and that theme continues out onto the balcony where you now sit. Succulents in small pots cover the flat surfaces of the railings that keep you falling 26 stories onto hard pavement, and there are different plants in larger pots lining the boundary of the balcony. Some of them are simple greenery, some with long leaves with pink and yellow tips and others with feathery green leaves that tickle your face. The flowering plants that had been in vibrant bloom all summer were beginning to fade, their colours dulling so they could hide themselves away through the winter, but they never faded entirely.

It’s leading into late afternoon, and you're stretched out across the sun-baked wooden floorboards of the balcony, taking a break from fiddling with the stupid wires of Squarewave's transistor for the moment. You've been instructed, multiple times, that you have to at least wear rubber gloves when you're handling it which you take as an insult, because as _if_  you'd be stupid enough to electrocute yourself. You're planning on putting it away when Jake gets back because he's not as careful as you- he's clumsy but sturdy all at once, a brick wall you could never knock over but may well fall apart of its own volition, rather than fleet footed and nimble like you are.

You and Jake are different in quite a few ways, you've noticed. While you're inclined to lock yourself away and set yourself some kind of project to keep your restless mind occupied, Jake could never manage that. He can't sit still, can't abide so much as the thought of standing around twiddling his thumbs. He's better at talking to other people as well, although you're not exactly a tough act to follow in that department - if he doesn't stand there frozen in place while he tries to figure out the ulterior motives of his conversational partner, he's already streets ahead of you. As far as Jake is concerned, people just _do_  things, and when they do those things then you figure out the next thing to do. "Keeps you on your toes!" he'd say, which you know because you don't even need him to be present to fill in the blanks of what he might say in any given situation at this point.

He's interesting. The thought turns over and over inside your head, allowing you to consider it from every angle, as you feel the sun begin to dig its claws into what little skin you have exposed. Summer with Jake has left you a healthy looking pale brown colour, where at first your forays into the outside world had left you looking tomato-y and generally terrible. Dave had laughed at you and made a point of asking why you were blushing every time he saw you, but now you think that it kind of suits you.

More interesting still, you think as you fit Squarewave's transistor back into place, is the way that Jake had bolted out the front door as soon as you arrived this afternoon. You're pretty sure that you know why, too; he and Jade are moving away. You've known for a while, but he didn't know that you know and you weren't sure how to bring it up and so it's remained a big, ambiguous question mark in your lives.

Now it seems like it was a bad idea to leave the difficult conversation in Jake's hands that you presumed would be more capable with complicated social interactions than yours are, but judging by the way he sprinted downstairs under the guise of getting slushies for the both of you, at the beginning of autumn no less, you're beginning to think you may have miscalculated.

It's not often that Jake ventures into the outside world without you - it would have been before the two of you had met, but you've rapidly learned that .Whenever the two of you leave the house together, Jake keeps a firm grip on your hand at all times. You hadn't been too sure how you felt about it at first, and you think it must have been obvious - you'd looked so shocked when Jake had gone to hold your hand, assailed by the feeling of the warmth of his palms and the pattern of swirls and spirals you could feel underneath your thumb, and he'd been utterly nonplussed. "Put away the old fly catcher, Dirk, we've got to keep track of each other and this is the best way. It's Jade's first rule, after all!" he'd said with a grin a mile wide, and you thought that you couldn't really argue with that.

You hear the front door close and some Jake-ish clattering about from inside, and busy yourself with fiddling with Squarewave’s chassis, parts of him that you know are perfect because you’ve checked and double checked them a thousand times over but hey, it’s not like it’s going to do him any harm the thousand and first time. You’re mostly trying to look busy enough that you can convincingly pretend that you haven’t noticed how awkward this entire situation is. You don’t really like eye contact or uncomfortable conversations and emotions aren’t really your bag, so this whole thing is nightmare fuel for you.

“What are you up to?” he asks, finally, and you don’t even need to look up at him to know what he’s doing. The way you’re so still and quiet is making him uncomfortable, you can tell, considering how torn up and fitful he’s probably feeling right now. You don’t really know how to help with that so you’d rather focus on something that you _do_  understand and help once you’ve figured out an effective way of doing so, but apparently that’s not working either.

You shrug. “I meant to pack it all up before you got back. I know he looks like a big mess, but the parts are coming together, kinda. Got lots of welding to do.” You doubt that Jake was asking for a play-by-play of Squarewave’s development, but your projects are a conversational topic that you’re totally in command of. It makes you feel a little more together in difficult moments like these.

“Expect a fight from Jade on that one, pal,” Jake says, with a chuckle that’s so transparent it’d be laughable if he wasn’t so obviously upset.

“I had to fight her to get it in the first place, remember. I’m a seasoned brawler at this point.” Such fights were not really fights; Jade would gently remind you that metalworking wasn’t really safe for children under ten, at which point you would mention the fact that she took Jake on his first trip to the Congo last year, and there were a lot less exotic death-animals involved in metalwork so you’d probably be okay. “Anyway, if she’s busy with Dave, she’ll never notice.”

Jade and Dave are very close and while away their time together in Dave's bedroom with the door closed, which allows the two of you a lot of unsupervised time together. More often than not, that involves you talking Jake into something he kind of wants to do already, but says no to for Jade’s sake. He’s easier to convince when she isn’t within earshot.

Jake had wondered if they liked each other, but you knew better - you'd once questioned John's role in your life, and after a lot of stop-starts and hesitation, Dave had simply deigned to refer to him as 'a boy that he liked'. You'd asked Dave if he liked anybody else and the very idea had seemed laughable to him, so it seemed like a safe guess that he either couldn't or wouldn't like anyone else. You question, not for the first time, whether Jake is a boy that you like. That's a whole other confusing subset of feelings and you can't make much sense of the ones that you have as it is, so you dismiss the thought almost immediately.

You have to leave the nature of Dave and Jade's relationship as an unanswered question, an enduring mystery - _you_  know what Jade and Dave spend their time doing together, but you’re not sure that Jake does. In fact, you sincerely doubt it, and you’re not going to be the one that opens his eyes to the wide world of drugs. Odds are that getting clean is at least part of the reason why Jade is in such a hurry to move away.

“Right-o. I’m sure you could go six rounds with my grandmother any day.” Jake looks doubtful, the way that he always does when you imply that Jade might not be capable of or know something. Anything, really. It’s not blind admiration so much as it’s a level of faith you can neither understand nor emulate. 

Thinking about that makes your chest feel heavy and uncomfortable, weighed down with something you’re not qualified to identify, so you move on quickly. “You have no faith. Tell me you at least got the goods or I’m not takin’ your insults any more.” 

It’s orange. You roll the plastic cup back and forwards in your hands, watching the fake colours of the ice inside swirling around and turn your palms pink and numb. This is the only flavour that isn’t overpowered by the taste of chemicals that make you gag, the only kind that isn’t too sweet or too syrupy for you to stomach. These are boring, inconsequential details about you and your many hangups, the kind of thing even you struggle to care about most days, but Jake never forgets.

 “Thanks,” you mumble, and you can’t quite compel yourself to bring it to your lips. It’s completely illogical but you feel like the desperate need to preserve it. Even if you could, even if you did do something so gratuitously fucking weird, you’d only have to get rid of it in a few weeks anyway.

There’s a pause, and you can feel his gaze fixed on you, trying (in vain, but you appreciate the effort) to read your expression through the ever-present mask that your shades provide. “This is the right kind, isn’t it? It was either this or lemonade, and I knew exactly what you would say. ‘This stuff doesn’t taste like lemons or lemonade and I’m not taking the risk of drinking a giant space slug’s butt juice’.”

You grin at the memory - the two of you were fresh off a three day Futurama marathon, which had led on to Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and the two of you had drunk a metric ton of Coke to keep yourselves going until the end. The problem being that when the end did come, you were too excited and sugared up to sleep, so you’d gone up to the roof together and watched the stars. Jake had excitedly taught you about astronomy, a subject you were virtually clueless on, and you think it made him feel good to teach you something that you didn’t already know. He knew all the names of the stars and constellations, knew details about the planets right down to their atmosphere, and you had hung onto his every word. After he was done, you contemplated how difficult it would be to build a spaceship and settled on ‘extremely difficult’, but you still told Jake about it and the two of you had made plans to settle Mars.

He’s still looking at you, waiting for a response that’s long since gotten lost in your throat, cast aside by your wandering mind. “Oh. No, it’s great, you’re better at this than Dave is. I don’t know what I would do without you, man.”

Jake's bottom lip wobbles at that and you instantly regret your choice of words. It wasn't _intentional_ , just kind of heavy, but you should have expected that he would react like this.

 "You ok?" you ask, making it perfectly clear that you know how redundant the question is, but he doesn't have to talk about it. You're not really in the business of pretending that everything's fine when it obviously isn't - that seems kind of pointless and futile to you - but you could try, at least.

Jake twists his hands together for a few moments, not meeting your eye, and you don't even have to _try_  to read him - he practically carves his emotions into his own skin without bothering for a moment to obscure them. "Jade, erm, Grandma gets a little restless when we bandy around one place for too long. I did try to convince her that nobody would find us here and that I felt happier here than I do in other places - more than I did on the island, even! - but she said she knows best, and, well, she does know best. So we- we're off when summer comes to an end." 

It's strange, because this is information that you already knew, and yet the shock and displeasure and twinging feeling of repressed pain hit you exactly as hard as they did the first time. You've had time to process the concept of Jake and Jade not being a part of your life any more, and it's not like you're getting left behind.

Dave has shown you lots of pictures of your new house in California, even flew you out there before he made a decision because he's smart enough to know that forcing you to live somewhere that you don't want to live would be hell on earth, and also maybe because he trusts your judgment or something. Who knows. It's a lot bigger than the tiny apartments that you've occupied previously but not quite as monumental as Rose's mansion in New York.

You'd asked him how much it had cost and he'd said 'don't worry about it', the same 'don't worry about it' that he tried to feed you when you asked him how much of something he'd taken, to which you applied the same interpretation and came out with an answer of 'too fucking much'. It wasn't as close to the beach as you might have liked but it was in a quieter part of town as a result, and it was ordinary-looking and unassuming enough that the two of you would blend in. Blending in unless you choose otherwise is kind of the way that you like to do things, and Dave knows that.

You look down at the cup in your hands again, still full, still waiting for you to make a decision. Yet again, you consider stowing it away in Jake and Jade’s freezer, but you figure that’s the lesser of two options available to you. You could leave it there, allow it to melt and become bitter and lose the parts that you like the most, or you can make the most of it while it’s here and you still have it.

“That’s okay,” you say finally, telling yourself that you have no right to react badly to this. After all, there’s only going to be a couple of days between your respective departures from the two apartments. “So are we. Dave has to go to California to work on the movie in September. Or the moive, I guess. I’m going with him, obviously.”

Jake looks like he’s been punched in the face and you run over your words in your mind, trying to figure out where you misstepped. “When were you going to tell me? I’ve been twisted up about this for days, you great bloody idiot. I was dreading telling you, I thought you might- oh, blast, I don’t know-“

“Cry?” you ask, bemused. Jake knows better than to expect a big, emotional reaction from you, but you still feel like you’ve disappointed him somehow, like he wanted more.

“Well- yes,” he says, dropping his gaze, and now _Jake_  looks like he’s going to cry. Discomfort settles in the pit of your stomach, or maybe it’s guilt, you’re not too sure. You just know that you don’t like how it feels to know that you’ve upset him. “We might never see each other again.”

After a moment’s pause, during which you consider a hundred things that you could say and decide that you hate every single one of them, you figure that it’s best to just go basic. “That’d suck.” 

Jake laughs in a strangled sort of a way, bitter sounding and unpleasant, and the sound gets under your skin and digs into you. It’s frustrating when you get like this. You can feel that there’s another person arms length from you who badly needs you, who needs you to care for them and express your love for them in some kind of tangible way that doesn’t leave them questioning and feeling like you’re indifferent, but it’s like you have some kind of emotional gatekeeper that just wouldn’t allow it.

There’s only a certain allotment of emotions that you can experience before you get stressed out by the fact that you’re simply not equipped to handle them, and this definitely feels like that sort of situation. Nothing good ever comes of you getting overstimulated and overwhelmed, just embarrassing tantrums and a loss of control that you don’t enjoy and can scarcely afford.

Rose says that you’re good at compartmentalising but when someone flings all those compartments wide open, you lose track of it all. That’s a much kinder explanation for it than the one you might have used - you always assume your brain is just broken and you have to work around the cracks in it.

This situation itself is winding you up, and Jake sniffling and wiping tears away on his sleeve isn’t helping, but you know that you can’t ask people to stop having emotions while you try to figure out what to do about them. The only thing that manages to bring you back to yourself is the condensation on your cup, the feeling of cold water trickling between your fingers, and the harsh reminder of your physical body reboots your brain and kicks it out of shutdown mode.

Your throat feels dry and weird when you think about elaborating on your feelings for him, so you’re still not sure if you can do that much, but you can take some sort of action to show him that you’re feeling _something_. The sky is tinted orange and gold as the sun begins to set overhead, signalling the beginnings of the night sky as it sets in, and an idea comes to you.

“Jade still has her tent, right?” you ask.

Jake frowns at you, and he clearly thinks that you’ve lost it for good, but at least he’s not crying any more. The prospect of no more tears definitely seems promising. “I think it’s been moved down to the storage space, but- Dirk, I really think she’d notice if we try to run away to the tent together.”

For a brief, whimsical moment (more insane than whimsical, really) you imagine hiding out in some park in the middle of Kansas in the English-Harley’s two-man tent, beating college students at chess for tips and becoming a part of the local wildlife. The thought is ridiculous and it makes you laugh, which you’re thankful for, because it loosens you up a little. “Don’t worry, we’ll go up so high nobody but the crows will find us.” 

Luckily, he seems to catch your drift, because you didn’t really feel like elaborating further. You take Jake’s total lack of protest as assent and put him to work, sending him down to the storage space to dig around for the tent - he’s stronger and bigger than you, and carrying it from the storage space to the elevators will pose no challenge for him - while you gather supplies.

There’s not much in Jade’s kitchen by way of food. You put your drinks in the fridge and hunt through the cupboards, but there's little to be found save for their apocalypse-quality canned food. They’re probably trying to use up what they have in the cupboards before they move, you think to yourself, and find the thought so thoroughly jarring that you slam the cupboard door closed in anger, or agitation, you can’t quite tell which drives you more. You’ll just have to get pizza and not think about this. Good plan. 

Moving on from that regrettable diversion, you dig up a couple of sleeping bags from the cupboard and some blankets from Jake’s bed - which Jade will not be pleased about you hauling upstairs, but there’s not really very much that she can do about it - and carry them up to the roof. Much to your annoyance, Jake has beaten you there with the tent and is looking at you with an expression that can only be described as the smuggest look imaginable.

As the two of you work together to set up the tent, you can feel Jake studying you intently, and you know it must seem strange to him. He and Jade are such open people, who not only wear their emotions on their sleeve but sing ballads about them from the rooftops. You know you won’t be permitted to continue this way for very long, acting as though nothing has changed, but for now it’s far preferable to the alternative. 

Something about their tent always defies you and Jake takes over your half of the job before too long, setting up camp for the two of you within a matter of minutes and looking very pleased with himself while he does. You consider making an excuse - you’ve been working on Squarewave all day and your hands and brain are severely fatigued, it’s getting dark out and you’re wearing shades, you weren’t raised by goddamn Bear Grylls - but instead, you decide that you’re just going to let Jake have this one.

It's fun, because messing around with Jake is always fun. He digs up old newspapers that Dave gets delivered but never reads - God only knows what he's been using them for - and sets up a campfire, which is fun for all of three minutes until you hear panicked chatter from the balconies of the penthouse apartments and remember why it's not a great idea to set fires in residential apartment buildings. The two of you manage to half cook a s'more in those three minutes and split it between you, and it's likely that'll be dinner for the night because Jake refuses to have pineapple on his pizza and you refuse to live like a savage in a pineapple-free universe.

Eventually the two of you manage to agree on pizza without waging all-out war, and once you're fed and content and kind of sleepy, you curl up as close to him as you can on his blow up mattress. The weird material of Jake's sleeping bag always makes you feel like you're sleeping on an ice rink, slipping and sliding all over the damn place, but tonight his arm is around you and holding you secure and even if it's only to share heat during the cold of night, like he says, you still like it a whole lot. 

"So that one's Andromeda," you say after a few moments of silence. Usually you're perfectly comfortable with silence, much more comfortable than you would be trying to fill the space with hot air, but right now you're warm and happy and doing a great job of forgetting about the axe looming over the both of you. Silence would give you both space to think about it.

Jake squints in the direction that you're pointing, humming to himself as he searches the sky before he lights up, clapping his hands together with glee. "Well spotted! That's Andromeda, and…" He traces out a jagged line in the sky, and you watch intently as though Jake was placing the stars there himself. "That's her mother Cassiopeia, just a touch to the right. The family picture. You can only see them on this side of the world, you know."

"Lame," you say, though it doesn't feel like a strong enough word to describe the fact that there's a whole universe of stars out there that half the world will never be able to see. "Kind of apt, though. Andromeda was supposed to be so beautiful that Poseidon got angry at the fact that she existed and sent some gross sea monster after her, because that's just the kind of thing that he did. Maybe it's for the best that she's kept kind of under wraps."

"You think Australians would be so awestruck by the beauty of a whole other galaxy that they'll send a space monster to destroy it?"

"I'd be really disappointed if they didn’t." When Jake laughs, he laughs with his whole body, and for a second you think that he's going to buck you off. You'd actually be kind surprised if he could buck your head off its perfectly respectable position on his shoulder, but he seems to be giving it a real good try. 

His laughter rings through the night and echoes into nothing, disappearing into the darkness, and you wish that you could get it back. You wish that you could get _so_  much back. So much goddamn time that neither of you realized had a limit to it, because you were too busy getting caught up in this and how completely great it is. 

“I’ll miss you,” you say to nobody, to nothing, to the night sky at large with no expectation of a response, to Andromeda and Cassiopeia and Perseus. It doesn't _sound_  like your own voice when you say it, and you're not even sure when or how it happened, but you know that you must have because Jake, lying next to you, stiffens when it's said.

Jake squeezes your shoulder and rests his head against yours while you press your face into his neck. He smells like earth, like star shaped leaves, like a place that you've never been but somehow feels deeply familiar to you, if only because you've breathed it in off his skin so often that you may as well have been there yourself. "I'll miss you too," he says, and his voice is so painfully raw. You wonder if he's so open with everyone, or just you. You wonder if everyone he meets ends up holding his beating heart in their hands, loving it and fearing it in equal measure.

There's wetness on your cheeks that stings your skin, and you realize that you must be crying, even though you didn't know that you had started. You don't sniffle, don't even move to wipe the tears away, instead choosing to lie next to him and allow the evidence of your sadness to exist.

Jake, lying next to you, is less prideful than you are and allows himself a few sobs and sniffles, not so much that you feel like he's asking for anything more than you're already giving him.

The pantheon of gods and goddesses above you twinkle on, and for a moment you imagine that they would help you, if they could. Knowing what you know about the Hellenic pantheon, it's pretty unlikely that they'd give a rat's ass, but you can dream. You can dream about Poseidon flooding the great state of Texas, leaving nothing standing but your high-rise and you and Jake, standing on top, your hands still intertwined as you looked over the endless horizon of blue.

It feels familiar, in a strange sort of a way, but most importantly it stems the flow of tears and allows you to drift off. You think you hear Jake tell you he loves you, but you're not sure. You think you respond in kind, but you're not too certain about that either.

When the two of you wake up in the morning, predictably getting blasted in the face by the Texas morning sun, neither of you mention it. You don't mention the countdown that's just started for you, you don't talk about your feelings, you just exist together as though dread isn't a new, heavy weight on both your shoulders.


	4. Cal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH BOY i'm nervous about posting this one because it is. distinctly kind of awful? in the nature of the content rather than the writing of itself (i hope)
> 
> so. warnings for dirkcal. cal, in this situation, refers to caliborn and not his puppet because even i'm not that weird. it's a Very Unhealthy Relationship and there's ongoing references to sadomasochism and i think... that's the most that i need to warn for. aside from the drug$ but that's a given in this verse
> 
> this chapter is set when dirk is age 16, starting to slide downhill in a pretty major way but also pretending that he isn't because it's dirk strider and that's what he does.

If there's one consistent perk when it comes to smack, it's sex.

Namely, the full-body numbness that spreads from your fingers to your toes. It still feels /good/ when Cal fucks you, but you can't get /quite/ enough sensation going to make yourself come for a while and neither can Cal, which comes in handy. The two of you fuck for a /long/ time, long enough that you lose track, long enough that daylight fades and the dark of night has well and truly set in by the time that you're both finally done.

The numbness helps out in another way as well. Cal is… well, you don't really know what word you can use to describe it. Calling him a sadist makes you sound like some sad little victim that can't stop him from hurting you to get his jollies, which is just so completely off base. You suppose that would be the technical term for describing someone who gets off drawing a blade across your chest, watching crimson trickle down the planes of your torso, viscous as it mingles with your sweat.

You just… don't really feel it. You feel it on some abstract level, a twinge of pain and discomfort from your body telling you that something is happening to it that it doesn't really like, but you find the sight a lot more upsetting than the actual feeling. It's visually overwhelming so you focus on other things, focus on the look on Cal's face (which usually borders on terrifyingly gleeful), focus on breathing, focus on how good you feel /around/ the sensation of being cut. It's strange, but it works.

Pain generally kicks in the next day, when you're trying to do things but you can't without aggravating a wound. That's more frustrating than anything else, but generally, you tell him to keep them shallow so that they can heal without bleeding all over the fuckin' place and drawing attention to you. Dave doesn't know about this, even Roxy doesn't really know about this - she knows that Cal used to choke you, but you haven't filled her in on the fact that the two of you have 'graduated' from that.

This time he went a little overboard. You're lying in your bed next to him, both trying to catch your breath - again, you lost track of how long you were doing it for - but your newest wound is drawing your attention. It looks like your usual wound dressings might not do too much to quell the flow of blood and you're a little concerned. "I really think you took it too far on this one, man."

"Stop being. Such a fucking baby," Cal replies in that stilted way of his. You figure it must be some sort of speech disorder, but try as you might, you can't get any kind of clarification out of him. There's all kinds of things he keeps from you, but then there's lots of things that you keep from him as well. There's an unspoken, mutual agreement between the two of you that you don't want or need intrusions into certain aspects of your personal business.

The agreement doesn’t quell your curiosity, but it does give you a reason to rein it in a little.

It's just… you're searching for an explanation for him, and you know there has to be one. Whatever it is, you know it won't be pleasant. There's no softness to Cal, no attempt to buffer his less positive traits or exude some kind of vibe that people would find less off-putting. Cal is the kind of guy that people don't sit next to on public transport because hostility rolls off him in waves and that's not something that you're born with. That's something you become.

Generally, it doesn’t bother you that he struggles with the touchy-feely side of things, because you do too. Telling him that you liked him in the first place had been an infuriatingly roundabout conversation in which any expression of interest on your part was met with an incredibly helpful response of “gross”, and through a bizarre sequence of events your relationship evolved to something quasi-romantic.

Interest is a good word for your feelings towards him. The lack of outward affection makes your relationship almost feel like a research project because, for the most part, you spend your time together trying to figure him out. Getting information from Cal directly is next to impossible because he immediately goes on the defensive, but that’s just a challenge. You like a challenge.

The relationship between you is complicated and consistently shifting in its definition. Sometimes he asks you to touch him, to be gentle with him as though it's something horribly shameful and obscene that he's asking of you, only to turn around and nearly bite your goddamn hand off when you do indulge him. It's strange to be asked and stranger still to know that kindness is something that the two of you need a safe word for.

You realize you're staring at him without saying much of anything while all this drivel runs through your mind, and he's casting you a look that's half disdainful and half uncomfortable. "What are you looking at."

He's searching your room for his clothes, which could honestly be anywhere - neither of you were paying much attention when you started this - and it's not like you particularly want Cal to stay, but he could make it a little less obvious that this is mostly a booty call. "I guess I'm watching you make your great escape. "

"I'm not escaping shit. You ignorant douchecanoe," Cal shoots back at you, pulling on his jeans gracelessly - he almost loses his balance and hops around your room on one leg as he tries to regain it. Jesus, he's like a fucking hurricane sometimes. "I need a drink and in my experience. You and your brother kind of fail spectacularly. At keeping the kitchen stocked," he says, and he's not wrong - Dave isn't exactly the weekly grocery shopping type, or even the monthly grocery shopping type. "We're going out."

"Sorry it's not the fuckin' Ritz. We don't offer room service." As far as you know, Cal doesn't have his license, meaning you'll have to drive Dave's car to the nearest late night supermarket and back. It's been about three hours since you did your last hit but that's still not fucking long enough to put yourself behind the wheel of heavy machinery. "Please tell me you're joking."

"Why would I be joking."

"Despite all the drugs and knives involved in our relationship, I'm not actually trying to kill us both."

"Surely you are not so incompetent. That you cannot manage to drive five minutes down the road. Without killing us both."

God damn him, you know that he's playing you in the most obvious way possible, and he knows that you know, but that doesn't seem to stop it from working. It'll be fine, you tell yourself. Sure, you're a little dizzy, but you're always dizzy afterwards and you've never passed out before. It's probably a good idea to get something to eat after losing blood anyway.

Those are the reasons that you're doing this, you tell yourself. Not for any other reason. Not to prove your competence to somebody that you have nothing to prove to. Just for food and for the sake of general cooperation.

Cal is giving you this shit eating fuckin' grin that shows every single one of his pointy teeth. He knows that he's won and you've never met anybody more obsessed with even the smallest of victories than your boyfriend. "If I crash the car, you're paying for it."

"Bullshit."

You stand up carefully, assessing both the damage to your body and the general risk of you falling over like a Jenga tower. Seems pretty safe so far, but your head definitely feels… unpleasantly fuzzy. It'll be fine. It's going to be fine.

He whines endlessly while you get yourself ready, but you don't want to terrify any innocent people just trying to buy condoms or dental floss or whatever the hell else people leave the house for at this time of night, so you refuse to rush it with your bandages. Even so, they’re kind of flimsy and not really enough - you can see the first spots of red starting to seep through mere minutes after placing the bandage - but you won't be out for long and hopefully they will last.

At this point Cal is groaning about you taking too long every time that you take a second to breathe, and you're pretty eager to have this over and done with. Grey is only a slightly less risky choice of shirt colour than white would have been, but beggars can't be choosers. You haven't done your laundry in a day or two and your options are limited. You're really throwing caution to the goddamn wind by not covering up your track marks and you know it.

Once you're dressed to a point where you can be seen by the outside world without facing public indecency charges, the two of you can finally leave. Dave is asleep or passed out - you fight back the natural, deeply ingrained urge to check on him, telling yourself that you'll do it when you get back - and so the house is empty and quiet as you make your way out of there.

Dave’s car is basically your car - he’s rarely sober enough to drive and, now that you have your license, he has no reason to object. Not that you were ever too bothered about driving without a license, but you held off on that after a while once you realised the police showing up on your doorstep would end very, very badly.

“We’re not listening. To your hipster garbage,” Cal grumbles as the two of you stumble out of the front door, heading towards the car. There's a definite sway in your step that alarms you, but the important thing is that you focus for five minutes and put on a convincing act when you get there. It's just acting, you tell yourself. People act while they're high out of their damn minds all the time.

"There's a difference between hipster garbage and hipster genius," you say, and as you take your seat on the driver's side, it's hard not to notice when your vision momentarily blurs. It's a five minute drive, get a hold of yourself.

You promptly activate your hipster garbage because fuck him, if you're driving then you pick the music, those are the rules. 

"Have I ever told you. That you are my personal nightmare?" Cal asks, flopping back against the seat like a ragdoll, his mop of black hair going every which way.

"Not recently, but I always appreciate the reminder." Now's not really the time to be looking at him or thinking about him - definitely won't help with the whole focusing thing - but you've always thought he's pretty in a weird, sharp kind of way. What caught your attention about him in the first place was that he was the only person you've ever seen with the same eye colour as Dave's. Cherry red, but he doesn't bother to conceal them. You liked that about him, in the beginning. To your mind, it showed a kind of confidence that appealed to you. More like arrogance, now that you think about it. Give me a hard time about this, I /dare/ you.

His familiarity with and access to smack was just the icing on the cake.

It's obvious that he's conscious of the fact that he's being stared at, but he refuses to acknowledge it, his eyes squeezed shut tight in defiance. That's just another thing you liked about him, in a strange sort of a way - he never, ever gives you an inch and you have to take it for yourself. Dating him, if that is what you're doing, is a battle and hell if you don’t love a good fight.

You're keeping your eyes on the road again now, driving on autopilot more than anything else, which means you can dedicate just enough of your attention to fucking with him. He's still got his eyes shut - perfect conditions for a surprise attack. You reach out to grab the hand that's resting in his lap, lacing your fingers through his.

"The fuck. Do you think you're doing?" he practically shrieks, jerking his hand back like you tried to shove it in sulphuric acid. You expected the reaction but it still makes you jump, makes the car swerve a little, and thankfully the roads are all kinds of deserted or else you would have been so boned.

Worth it. You huff out a laugh, feeling incredibly pleased with yourself, the way that you only do when you know you've gotten one over on him. "I'm just showing you how much I care about you."

"Cut that shit out."

"How much I /love/ you."

"You're disgusting." Cal's cheeks are positively flaming at this point and he's shifting uncomfortably, shoving his hands in both his pockets to keep them out of range. The reaction that affection gets out of him is bizarre but hell if you don’t take advantage of it wherever possible.

It only briefly occurs to you that that's not a thing you've said before, to anyone. You can play it off and you definitely will - it's infinitely better than the alternative. Cal would chew his own leg off before he'd ever reciprocate, verbally at least, and you're sure that any feelings of that nature that you have towards him are the product of prolonged exposure.

He's still twitchy and won't make eye contact with you when you pull into the car park of the grocery store, and for a second there's silence between you. You're kind of fixating on that big, unplanned confession you just made and it's hard to tell if he's thinking about the same thing. He probably isn't. He probably assumed you were fucking with him, and that's the interpretation that you're going to commit to. Suffice to say: it's awkward as shit. You clear your throat. "You know, hanging around in dark carparks is how horror movies start. It's almost always the bad ones, but my point stands."

"Do you think that I do this to you. Because I like you?" It's a total non sequitur but you still know what it is that he's getting at. Dude has all the subtlety of a charging elephant. You need to get the hell out of this car and away from this situation.

"Of course not. How stupid do you think I am?" you say flippantly, dismissively, unbuckling your seatbelt with shaking hands that you are more than happy to pin on the heroin or blood loss or anxiety at the prospect of driving high, anything that might fit the bill.

Cal looks doubtful but it doesn't matter - the truth is what you make it. You climb out of the car, check your shirt quickly to make sure you're not bleeding through it, and head towards the grocery store with electricity in your veins, making you jittery and uneasy, though you're not entirely sure why.

He's uneasy with the very concept that you might like each other. There's always been antagonism between the two of you - said antagonism makes up the vast majority of your interactions - but you had considered it a thin veneer to cover the fact that you did like each other but neither of you were particularly good at processing it our understanding it. Mutually beneficial denial. Now, it seems, you've been hells of off base for a long fuckin' time and you have to recalculate. It makes your head hurt.

The fluorescent lights of the grocery store don't help, harsh on your extra sensitive eyes even through the defensive barrier of your shades. God, you're dizzy, you need to do this and you need to do this fast.

"Help me out here, bro. What are we here for again?" Cal is trailing after you, also looking pretty out of it, and you wonder how obvious the two of you are. It's unlikely they'll call the cops if the two of you keep to yourselves and go about your business quickly, but you're not taking any risks.

"You were going. To buy me a drink. And not bitch about it. That last part's important."

"Like hell I was."

"It's happening. Get used to it, rich boy."

"Your dad is literally a fucking lord, whatever that even means these days. Who do you think you're kidding." This, you can handle. You can settle into the back and forth and deal with all the other shit later, by yourself, which is how you do all of your best work.

You decide to buy him a drink to shut him up, one of those iced coffees that are 98% sugar because Cal lives off the stuff like a fucking insect, and try to clear your head enough to figure out what else you're going to need. Supplies for taking care of yourself, mostly - you're starting to feel the sting now and you know from experience that it's only going to get worse, and you're going to need some legal painkillers to get you through this. Shooting up again after you've lost as much blood as you have is definitely on the risky side.

When you get to the aisle where they keep the bandages, they're on a shelf that's just out of your reach. Genetics can suck your goddamn dick for making you 5’5", honestly. Cal is laughing at you, this grating high pitched snicker, as you have to jump to try and reach the ones that you need.

"I barely scratched you. This is just embarrassing. For the both of us," he says, glancing around to see if anyone has noticed this display that is, honestly, pretty fucking embarrassing but it's not like you have any other option at this time of night. You have to stand on your toes and extend every inch of your body as far as it'll go but finally, finally, you grab hold of a package of bandages and knock it from the shelf to the ground.

You bend over to pick it up and, when you try to stand up straight again, you feel horribly nauseous. Cold. /Bad/. It strikes you that this is definitely a very, very bad thing, but fuck if you can figure out what you should be doing about it. Your mind clumsily grasps at straws.

"I think I need to…" Your mouth forms the appropriate shape to finish the sentence, but words don't come out. Speech is well outside of your capabilities right now and you feel so fucking exhausted you'd be surprised if you could ever manage words again. The fluorescent lights are blinding you, surrounding you in harsh, artificial light that blocks out all else.

The next thing you know, you're on the floor.

There's people around you, saying a lot of things very fast, and blearily you open your eyes. Cal is nowhere to be seen and you're relieved, grateful even, because this is exactly the kind of thing he'd take as a personal inconvenience.

"Do you need some help?" The words are said with so much kindness that it throws you for a loop, renders you mute.

Help means hospital, hospital means blood tests, blood tests mean getting exposed for some pretty questionable life choices and then God knows what happens from there. At best, you'll be dragged through detox and then rehab, and your case workers won't bother to look too far into it. At worst people start asking questions about your home life again, and even though Dave is no longer on the brink of bankruptcy, one look at him is all it would take to figure out how you were getting access to your drugs of choice.

You don't respond just yet, focusing instead on pulling yourself up into a sitting position, and the collective shocked gasp of the small group of shoppers that have gathered around you makes you think that maybe that was a bad idea. When you look down there's blood staining your shirt and it's pretty fucking grotesque. Looks a lot worse than it is, but how it looks is enough to convince people to override your opinion on whether or not you need to go to a hospital.

You need to think and think fast. You'd just fuckin' run but the combined effects of smack and blood loss will probably make that a fairly pathetic venture.

"Stitches must have come out," you say, fairly convincing in your delivery as well. Not too shabby, Strider, not too shabby. "I always push myself too far, y'know. Reached for a packet of noodles and the next thing I know, I'm on the ground." Maybe you will actually need to stitch this one up. It's bleeding pretty profusely, the stain on your shirt still blooming red. Your stomach feels sticky and gross. "My friend told me not to do it. He's not so good with blood, I think he's in the car. I'll get him to drive me back to the hospital."

And the fuckin' Academy Award goes to you.

You're on your feet now, the crowd parting in your wake, and a few of them look a little uncertain about letting you just walk away right after you passed the hell out in a late night supermarket, but you're moving too fast to give them much of a choice. It's not until you're out the door and back in Dave's car, clutching a bloody plastic grocery bag, that you realize what you've done. All that you've got in there is iced coffee and aspirin and extra bandages, not exactly big ticket items, but you know how this looks.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

There doesn't seem to be too much of a commotion going on inside the store, which probably means that nobody has noticed what you've done just yet. Cal is still nowhere to be seen and if he goes back there later to see if you're still there or if anyone knows what happened to you, he'll be in some deep shit. You need to get moving and you need to get his dumb ass on the phone, pronto.

You make a point of seeming very measured, very calm, as you leave the parking lot and get back on the road. No speeding, no screeching tires, no alerting anyone to the fact that you've never been so desperate to leave a place before in your life. Your head is spinning and driving is a terrible decision right now, but it's the decision that you've had to make.

Red lights at the next intersection give you the opportunity that you need to pull up Cal's number and call him, begging the universe at large that he hasn't gone back there already. Pick up, Jesus, it's not rocket science. Pick up the damn phone.

No luck. You have to pull over or else you're going to get busted for being on your phone while you're driving and this situation will go from impossibly terrible to just goddamn horrendous, plus it really is getting kind of difficult to see straight. You /knew/ he cut too deep this time.

You pull over into a completely deserted car park in front of some florist or something and strip off your bloodied shirt, tossing it into the back seat of your car and surveying the damage. It's just that one nasty one from tonight that's giving you trouble, soaking through its bandage and leaking down your skin.

You peel off the utterly useless, grotesque bandage and go to throw it out the window, but you can't force that sight on some innocent florist. Instead, you empty out the stuff in your shopping bag onto the passengers seat and put it in there, casting it aside for now. At least that gives you better access to the things that you need in this situation.

Maybe it's not the best idea to use the items that you just stole, but hell, if you're gonna get screwed over you may as well make yourself comfortable during the screwing. God knows you haven't been doing that much recently. The bandages you got this time were a little more on the heavy duty side of things and, very carefully, you set it in place and instantly feel a thousand times less macabre.

All you can do now is pray to every God you don't believe in that Dave will be shut away in his bedroom when you get home. He's always had a tendency to freak out over your injuries, no matter how inconsequential they might be, and coming home like Carrie returning from the fuckin' prom will probably send him into full blown panic mode.

Now that that's taken care of, you can get onto the more pressing issue, which is that Cal /still/ hasn't called you back. Where did he even take off to in the first place? Again, you're grateful, because having him bitch about it for the entire ride home sounds like a nightmare you wouldn't be able to wake up from, but you've taken care of the messiest parts of the situation. This is the prime time for him to step back in.

You could pester him, but your hands are bloody and shaking and don't feel like your own. You're not sure you could type right now even if you wanted to, so it has to be a phone call.

Third call. No answer.

Fourth call. No answer. You find yourself straining to listen out for the sound of sirens.

On the fifth call, you finally get a hold of him, and the wave of relief that washes over you is dizzying. That could also be the blood loss, though.

"Yo, what the fuck," you say, right off the bat, and you can almost picture his bratty goddamn eyeroll in response. "Where are you."

It all sounds pretty calm on his end, which you can only count as a win. "As far away. From your gross bodily fluids. As I could possibly get," he says, and it pisses you right off because you weren't planning on jumping down his throat for leaving you behind, but it’s becoming a compelling possibility.

"First of all, let me just make the obvious joke and say that you've never been that shy about my bodily fluids before," you say, to which you only receive a groan in response. "Second of all…" You don't really know what to say. You did this, take some responsibility for it? Maybe he should give enough of a fuck about you to not leave you potentially bleeding out in the health aisle at the supermarket? All of these things sound whiny and self-pitying and you can't stand the thought of hearing it from yourself. "Screw it. I'm going home and I don't want to see you there. That's the gist of it." He can get caught out by the cops for all you care.

"I wasn't planning on being there. So that works out. For the both of us." You falter. Cal doesn't seem to get it and you could back out right here. You'd like to think that you're not afraid of being alone, that you don't care, but why else would you be hesitating right now?

The sound of an impatient sigh on his end brings you back to yourself, out of the spiral of self-doubt. "Can you just. Cut off the internal monologue. And get on with it."

You flake the fuck out. "Call me tomorrow." You hang up, your hands still shaking violently. Jesus.

Cal does call you the next day, but you just stare at it, letting it ring out. You don't answer him the next day, either. Or the day after that. You can't think of anything to say and the thought of having to say words to anybody ever again feels like an incredibly daunting prospect.

A few days into your hibernation, when you're sitting on the couch eating cereal and gazing vacantly at the TV whilst barely registering anything that seems to be happening on it, Dave appears seemingly out of nowhere to take a seat next to you and it makes you jump. It's a hot, sticky California day and you had thrown caution to the wind, discarding the armour of jeans and long sleeves that you'd been relying on to keep your secret in favour of a white tshirt and your boxers. It'd be fucking impossible for him to not notice the dressings of various lengths covering different parts of your exposed skin.

The two of you are silent for a while, but your heart is beating out of your chest and you're begging to any god who would listen that Dave is too high to be paying much attention. That's the only reason you'd dared to dress like this in the first place - you had assumed that he was following the one way street to oblivion alone in his bedroom, as he was most days.

It's almost like a challenge to see who will dare to speak first, who will have the courage to bridge the gap between you that's been growing steadily wider ever since you moved to California. You can /feel/ his scarlet gaze on you, scoping the wounds you have no chance of hiding and stopping when they hit the crook of your elbows, registering the bruising and track marks that have become so prominent.

Dave freezes. You freeze. Time stands still and you're both utterly lost on how to proceed.

"Shit," he mutters, barely audible, and when you finally get the courage to look at him, face him and what you've forced him to feel by doing this to yourself, Dave looks like he's about to crumple. Fold in on himself on the spot rather than face the reality of what you've become.

You don't know what to say. Silence presses down on you and holds your tongue on your behalf, and you let it.


End file.
